Here: Have A Little Peace

30Nov14

This is my new favorite spot in Occoquan. Obviously this picture was taken a few months ago. I’ve started a new blog entry at least half a dozen times since summer, but I haven’t gotten around to hitting the Publish button.

Annnd that’s because of how busy my August through November is. The end of August starts the Maryland Renaissance Festival, where I am every weekend except the one in September where I’m volunteering for Strut Your Mutt. Right before Halloween the festival closes, and I’m in last minute costume preparation mode. Come November, I start sliding like a quarterback, and then work tackles me hard, despite the fact that I’m already down, because, you know. Retail. Holiday. Man, that’s gonna leave a mark.

And in December, I get to surface again. So here are some stream-of-consciousness updates that I might have made over the past few months, if I had things a bit more together.

September 15th this year was the 20th anniversary of my dad’s motorcycle accident. At some point in the next year, I will have lived with post-injury Dad for longer than pre-injury Dad. That makes me wistful, but I don’t know why. Post-injury Dad and I get along better than pre-injury Dad and I did, which makes me even more sad. (For other daughters of brain-injured fathers,He Never Liked Cakeby Janna Leyde was really valuable for me, reading about her working through her relationships with her pre-injury dad and post-injury dad.)

Sometimes I have “if I’d only” moments, which I know are pointless. Everybody has these. I read something in The New Yorker earlier this year that struck me profoundly. When you’re in a situation where you believe you’ve experienced the worst possible outcome, ANYTHING you could have done would have been better. Sure, if you’d left work 15 minutes earlier, that horrible thing might not have happened, but, by the same token, if you’d juggled geese, it also might have improved the outcome. Which is ridiculous and reveals the flaw in this sort of logic. Hopefully. I figure if it might help anybody a little with a downward spiraling thought process, it’s worth sharing.

Got to see Henry IV parts 1 and 2 in repertoire at the Shakespeare Theatre. I adore the Henriad (also, I like saying “Henriad”), and I’ve always thought that IV Henry 2 was my favorite of the bunch. Seeing them back-to-back made me realize that 1 is all action and 2 is all thinking about the repercussions of the action. Seeing all 3 in one day would probably kill the actors, but it’d be quite spectacular. On a related note, it was lovely to see Stacy Keach as Falstaff and appropriate considering his Richard III at the Folger ensconced my love of Shakespeare almost 20 years ago.

This came up in my brain again last weekend, because The Walking Dead is using “The Parting Glass” in one of their commercials. I am all about using the word “joy” in the chorus in almost all contexts, but these are Hershel’s girls. They learned the version with the word “God” in it, I promise.